Rucker descendant sacrificed family for art career

'Passing the Holy Bread,' a painting by Rutherford County native Willie Betty Newman, was exhibited in France and the United States in the 1890s

In Rutherford County, the Betty Ford Road runs north across the East Fork, connecting Compton Road and Jefferson Pike. On the east - just north of the river - was the Betty Place, the home and plantation of William Francis McClanahan Betty from 1859 to his death in 1902.

Betty served in the Confederate army with the 28th Tennessee from 1862 to 1865. (His rank on separation is variously reported as colonel, captain and lieutenant. According to "The Roster of Confederate Soldiers," Betty was a 2nd Lieutenant.

The name of the road apparently evolved during or after the Civil War period when there was no bridge over the East Fork and passage involved splashing through the stream on foot, on horseback or in a horse-drawn conveyance. (A "ford" is "a place where a river or other water may be passed by wading," according to Webster.)

In 1859 Betty married Sophia Burrus Rucker, the only child of Benjamin Rucker. Named for his grandfather, a wealthy Virginia tobacco planter and inventor, Benjamin was the son of John Rucker, eldest of six siblings who came to Middle Tennessee in the 1790s.

On land inherited from his father, Benjamin built his home on the East Fork in 1832. His prosperous plantation was named Maple Grove (a/k/a Maple Shade). According to Mary Rucker Estes in "200 Years of Ruckers in Middle Tennessee," there is "some evidence that Benjamin Rucker had freed some of his slaves and supported the Union during the Civil War."

Maple Grove passed to Sophia upon her father's death in 1866. Sophia also died of natural causes in 1866 leaving the plantation to her husband and two daughters, Florence and Willie. After the war, the plantation came to be known as the Betty Place.

The younger daughter, Willie Betty, was born January 21, 1863. Little is known of Willie's childhood, but a 1903 interview suggests that she "showed an artistic bent" in her early years.

"Drawing on slate and paper, and on the wall, was the chief amusement of the little girl." In particular, as a small child she had a precocious ability to distinguish even the more subtle color shades and tints. This description of childhood skill is consistent with appraisals of her professional work - "Excellence in coloring and a marvelous handling of light and shade?"

Willie married J.W. Newman, a Mormon, in 1882 and had one son. In 1886 she left her husband and son in order to pursue an art scholarship and career. "My great-great-grandmother boldly sacrificed her family for her craft," notes Brian Patterson, a contemporary California artist and direct descendant. Despite the estrangement, the artist used her married surname throughout her professional career.

Newman began her formal training at the Cincinnati Art School where she completed a three-year course in 19 months. As part of her study, she completed an ambitious painting titled "Nearing Her Journey's End." The school exhibited this work at the Paris Salon in 1891, where it received acclaim and earned Newman a scholarship for study in Paris. Her painting depicted a quaintly dressed woman, near the end of life, seated in an attitude of resignation and patient acquiescence.

In 1893 Newman won a medal from the Julian Academie for a nude figure in charcoal which the Julian Academie retained on display for several decades. After her studies in Paris, Newman spent several years in rural Normandy and Brittany. During this period, according to one source, she "depicted sympathetically and with insight the life of these peasants, the religion which is so dominant in their lives, and the picturesqueness which lurks beneath a seemingly rough exterior."

What many consider Newman's masterpiece, "Passing the Holy Bread," was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1894. Painted while the artist was in rural France, this work portrays an almost obsolete custom in the rural districts of France.

When it was first exhibited in the United States, a somewhat patronizing art "connoisseur" in St. Louis pronounced it "the finest painting yet produced by an American woman." An art critic at the Olympian Magazine (July 1903) described the painting as "a rare study, delicate in sentiment and brilliant in coloring, and the rapt religious absorption of the devout peasants is strongly depicted."

Newman returned to Tennessee in 1901 and in 1905 opened the Newman School of Art in Nashville. Her home and studio were in the Vauxhall Flats on Eighth Avenue. (The Flats were on the site of the former Vauxhall Gardens, a resort and amusement complex - large assembly hall, a circular railway, winding promenades, green groves and "a wilderness of lamps which dimmed the stars" - named and modeled after a similar resort in 18th century London.)

Newman's school was not a financial success, but she prospered on her paintings and portraiture. According to the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: "At the turn of the 20th century there were no more important or influential figures in the visual arts in Tennessee than Willie Betty Newman."

During this period Newman was commissioned by the U. S. House of Representatives to do a posthumous portrait of John Bell for permanent display in the Capitol. (Bell, a Tennessee native, served as Speaker of the House in the 1830s, and as secretary of war in 1841. After a term in the U.S. Senate, he ran unsuccessfully for president in 1860, losing to Abraham Lincoln.) A second commission was for the official portrait of President James K. Polk which remains on permanent display in the nation's capital.

Over the next two decades Newman completed portraits of many prominent Tennesseans including John Trotwood Moore, Oscar F. Noel, Gov. James Frazier, James Caldwell and Elizabeth Rhodes Eakin.

Four of Newman's paintings, including her acclaimed "masterpiece," are now part of a private collection in Nashville. Several other Newman paintings are owned by the Cheekwood Museum of Art. At least one Newman original has recently been displayed at the Governors' Executive Residence in Nashville.

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Were Betty Ford and Willie Betty related? Are they people or places?

In Rutherford County, the Betty Ford Road runs north across the East Fork, connecting Compton Road and Jefferson Pike.